Category: faith transition, faith crisis

The Strength of Serious Doubt, Difficult Questions, and Disagreement with the LDS Church

On By lisatorcassodowningIn faith transition, faith crisis6 Comments

LAST WEEK, I LISTENED to a previously recorded broadcast of LDS apologist and nuanced thinker, Patrick Mason, who asked something like: how can we minister to members with serious doubts and difficult questions about LDS doctrine and practice? It’s something I’ve thought a great deal about. But this time, the question hit me differently, and I understood the disempowerment inherent in categorizing people in faith (or trust) crisis as doubters and questioners of the gospel rather than as those in disagreement with the LDS Church. I felt down to my bones how condescending the question is, how it supposes doubts and questions are weaknesses in need of fixing as opposed to a step forward along a path of spiritual growth.

I consider myself a nuanced Latter-day Saint, but I’m not someone plagued with doubts and questions that disrupt my faith in God. I’m a woman who’s invested decades in study, reflection, and prayer about the difficult realities associated with being LDS. Although I’ll never relinquish questioning as a vehicle for learning or cease to view faith as impossible without its companion, doubt, I assert I am not weakened because of these perspectives, nor am I living in some miserable state of unknowing. My state of unknowing broadens me because it prevents me from shutting out possibilities. My study, reflection, and prayer (each catapulted by curiosity and desire for self improvement) have brought me to a state of disagreement with the LDS institution on some significant issues, not to a state of faithlessness in God. 

Continue reading “The Strength of Serious Doubt, Difficult Questions, and Disagreement with the LDS Church” →

Dear LDS Woman, on Discovering Joseph Smith Deceived Emma

On By lisatorcassodowningIn Epistles to the Saints, faith transition, faith crisis, Feminism, Polygamy5 Comments

You aren’t alone. Many of us have been exactly where you are. When you called, you didn’t have to say much before I understood. You’d encountered the Fanny Alger story. You’d been taught Joseph Smith’s polygamy began in Nauvoo, not Kirtland, and with Emma’s consent, not behind her back. Your image of Joseph Smith is shattered, and with it, your trust in the leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. These men who pushed a scrubbed clean narrative of Joseph no longer seem incorruptible. You feel broken. What was certain no longer is. With each breath, your pain reminds you of Emma’s pain.

Continue reading “Dear LDS Woman, on Discovering Joseph Smith Deceived Emma” →

Today’s Lost Generation and the Crisis of Trust

On By lisatorcassodowningIn faith transition, faith crisis11 Comments

As Mormonism rounded the bend of the early 20th century, children who had not known Joseph Smith or experienced the pioneer trek came to adulthood—and many of them began leaving the church, earning for themselves the nickname “the lost generation.” These were people who didn’t experience the miracles of early Mormonism, nor did they understand their parents’ testimonies against the gritty reality of the industrial age. The old shoe didn’t fit.

One hundred years later, a second “lost generation” is emerging, a group for whom the feel-good narratives of the past conflict with the transparency of the internet age. To the first generation of lost children, their parents and church leaders probably seemed like zealots who lacked an understanding of a changing world. But to this generation, the conflict between the narrative they grew up with and the scholarship which contradicts it leaves many thinking their parents are fools and Church leaders, liars. To complicate matters, this lost generation is accused of experiencing a crisis of faith, even though it was their faith that brought them to study. To me, what they experience looks more like a crisis of trust. Continue reading “Today’s Lost Generation and the Crisis of Trust” →